


Never

by songlin



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-16
Updated: 2012-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-29 15:45:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songlin/pseuds/songlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years after Sherlock died, he turns up outside the Tesco.</p><p>My contribution to the immediate post-Reichenbach mourning period.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never

Two years after Sherlock died, he turns up outside the Tesco.

John’s immediate response is to drop his groceries. It got hard to keep holding onto them when all the air had vacuumed out of his chest. He staggers backwards.

Sherlock’s fingers tap nervously against his leg. “John.”

John takes a few wheezing breaths. “You’re dead,” he says when he has the oxygen. “I saw you fall, I...I _buried_ you.”

His forehead crinkles. “I’m sorry, John.” At any other moment John would have been preoccupied with the real remorse in his voice, so deep and heartfelt it almost broke him, but that was beside the point. “I had to.”

John laughs. It was not a nice laugh. “You _had_ to? That’s bollocks, Sherlock, and you damn well know it.”

“Moriarty--”

John punches him across the face.

Sherlock does not try to avoid it. He takes a step back and put a hand to his cheek, just feeling. John whirls and kicks a bag of groceries. Something breaks.

“YOU COULD HAVE SAID SOMETHING!” he shouts. “YOU COULD’VE LET ME KNOW!”

“I did, John! I did!”

John pauses. He turns back towards Sherlock, glaring suspiciously. “Please tell me this isn’t one of your stupid bloody riddles, Sherlock, because you made me watch you _die._ You made me listen to your last _fucking_ words.”

“Think, John!” He punctuates his words with his hands, fingers to temples, and John tries not to think about how much he missed that. “What did I say?”

John presses his palms to his eyes.

_“Please,_ John. Just...think. What were the last words I said to you?”

John thinks.

_“Stay exactly where you are! Don’t move! Keep your eyes fixed on me! Please, please, will you do this for me?”_

He shakes his head. “Nope.” He turned, started to walk away.

“John, wait!”

Sherlock seizes his arm.

John almost punches him again. “Let _go_ of me.”

“Please,” he pleads. “Please. I told you to keep your eyes fixed on me, remember?”

John runs through the day in his head.

_“Goodbye, John.”_

_He ran. Barely two steps later a cyclist rammed into him, knocking him to the ground and stunning him, and by the time he was up Sherlock was surrounded by people who wouldn’t let him through._

He opens his eyes.

“The lorry.”

A wide smile breaks across Sherlock’s face. “Got there.”

John rubs his brow. “Jesus Christ, Sherlock.”

“There you are.”

_“I_ never left.”

“John, I wouldn’t have, but Moriarty’s people were set to strike, so I couldn’t let you--”

John slaps him. Not hard, just enough to shut him up.

Then he kisses him.

The first time his psychiatrist had asked him to say everything he’d wanted to tell Sherlock while he was alive, he almost laughed. Sherlock was not the kind of man with whom you traded trite therapy phrases like “I’m glad to have had you in my life.” Nevertheless, he got to thinking about things he’d never said to Sherlock, and down that road lies danger.

_Get your own bloody phone, it’s right there in your pocket. The day I met you, I was about two months from eating the wrong end of my Browning. It wouldn’t kill you to do the shopping once in a blue moon. Thank you for saving me. Stop putting my beer in the bathtub to make room for your experiments. I dreamed about you once, all dark and beautiful, and when I woke up I could hardly breathe but I pushed it into the corner of my mind where I keep the things that shouldn’t be. It worries me when you stop talking because I’m afraid you’ll never start again. Sometimes when you’re playing your violin at two in the morning I just lie there and listen because it’s marvelous, and you can tell everything about you by how and what you’re playing. I can think of nothing more beautiful than when you’re in a marvelous mood and playing your violin. Nothing more beautiful...more beautiful...beautiful..._

“You are a tremendous wanker,” John says into Sherlock’s mouth, but what he’s meaning is “never leave me again.”

Sherlock grins. “Always.” And what he’s meaning is “never.”


End file.
